My wife and I bought a house last year. Concomitant with any home purchase are the bevy of small projects that are needed to get a house up to snuff. Wishing to organize her ideas and find new ones, my wife started a new Pinterest board. The pins she was putting together were really interesting, and, because of Pinterest's never-ending-stream-of-content nature, she was finding great stuff we could do for the house that we hadn't even thought of.
So I decided to get in on that action. I created an account and started putting together some home improvement ideas. By doing so, I became a somewhat rare creature: A man actively using Pinterest.
That's an exaggerated way of putting it, but it's true Pinterest's demographics skew heavily towards women, with estimates of the social site's female user proportion ranging up to 80%. This is a known issue, and the problem of a large potential audience being left out is one that Pinterest is keen on addressing. Pinterest has held events for it's more popular male users. It has partnered with brands and groups that would appeal to a male demographic. It has created search filter options geared towards men. However much these efforts may help though, Pinterest is facing an issue it over which it may have little control: perception.
Whether or not the actual demographic breakdown of Pinterest users is accurate or changing, its perception as a female-centric site remains. It's seen as a site for wedding-planning and fashion. It's 'scrapbooking' nature is supposedly not appealing to men. Just do a Google search for 'Why don't men use Pinterest?' and you'll get a flood of articles addressing the issue. It's a perception so (involuntarily) ingrained into the brand that several Pinterest alternatives 'for men' have arisen, such as Gentlemint and Tapiture, in an attempt to capture an audience. They have darker colors and more risqué content, but in form and function they are essentially just Pinterest clones. (And often have NSFW content, which is why I'm not linking them.)
So, it seems that on one level, the reason men don't use Pinterest is because it's for girls. Which is a very silly reason for men not to adopt a very useful tool. Seriously, they really should. I was able to use Pinterest to find and organize some projects for making our house into our home, discovered a few places to get new furniture that weren't just IKEA-disposable bric-a-brac, and found some good recipes. The idea that this wouldn't appeal to men seems more than a little anachronistic.